17 July 1995 Anthony White To Represent NZ In Australian Science Competition

Lincoln University Horticultural Science honours graduate Anthony White, now working for Watties Frozen Foods Ltd, Hornby, Christchurch, will represent New Zealand in the finals of an Australian science competition.

The opportunity has resulted from Anthony winning the New Zealand Crop and Food Research Institute's Environmental Science Award with a research paper on the biocontrol of brassica pests. In addition to a $1000 cash prize, the award also carried the invitation to compete in an Australian competition along the same lines and Anthony has now been notified his presentation has won him through to a place in the finals.

Anthony's project, carried out for his Lincoln honours degree, involved investigating the enhancement of the biocontrol of brassica pests by planting paddock borders of the plant tansy leaf (Phaecelia tanacetifolia). Tansy leaf, a native of North America, is an excellent early season source of pollen for hoverflies and the larvae of these flies are major predators of brassica pests.

Working with cabbages in a field surrounded by a tansy leaf border at Prebbleton between the Lincoln University campus and Christchurch city, Anthony monitored hoverfly population levels at increasing distances from the crop.

His findings confirmed the potential of this sort of habitat manipulation for the biocontrol of horticultural plantings in general, but for high value crops such as cabbage, which have low pest damage thresholds, biocontrol alone is unlikely to replace insecticide use.

Anthony's supervisor for his honours project, Dr Steve Wratten of the Department of Entomology and Animal Ecology, says that while the threshold of cabbages for all pests is very low, with other crops such as cereals and oil seed rape, the biocontrol combination of hoverflies and tansy leaf borders has definite possibilities.

Dr Wratten said that while the approach has been tried in Europe, Anthony's work was the first investigation in Southern Hemisphere conditions and the first time it had been tried in relation to boosting hoverfly predation of pests on a cash crop such as cabbages.

From a family background of sheep, dairy cattle and crop farming in Marlborough, Anthony developed an interest in horticulture, especially plant propagation, through the Horticulture Club at his school, St Andrew's College, Christchurch, which he attended from 1985-89.

Coming on to Lincoln in 1991 after a year working in Christchurch, Anthony has won numerous awards and scholarships – the John Chaytor Memorial Scholarship, the Fruitgrowers Federation Bursary, the Value Added Contractors Scholarship, the Plant Propagators Student Award, a Plant Protection Research Unit Summer Scholarship, the NZ Society for Horticultural Science Award, the NZ Nurseryman's Association Grace­ Sierra Youth Award, and a Wrightson Scholarship. Now, in addition to his New Zealand Crop and Food Research Institute's Environmental Science Award there is the possibility of an Australian title joining the list.

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand.